


flight of the navigator

by sagemb



Series: two of the same understandings [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Fictional politics, Gen, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), actually is ideally read as a standalone, but this was so thematically similar to the previous work in the fic, can be read as a standalone, fictional historiography, i just had to organize them together, not a fic about MCU politics or historiography as much as i'd like to write one, tony stark is an individual who thinks perhaps a little too much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-04-25 16:00:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14382072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagemb/pseuds/sagemb
Summary: Tony Stark, on leave between wars. Or: an aftermath and a precursor.





	flight of the navigator

**Author's Note:**

> Not really a continuation of the previous work in this series-- just thematically similar.
> 
> I'm very grateful to my brain and my schedule that I was able to finish this before the release of Infinity War.
> 
> Title from a Childish Gambino song of the same name. Thanks to zachas and ohorpheuss for beta.

**I. LOT’S WIFE**

 

Tony cuts his calf on a piece of jagged rebar while wiring FRIDAY into the walls of the compound. At first he thinks it isn't so bad; he cleans it up and sticks a Band-Aid on it. One of the big square ones. It hurts like it's itchy, like an eggshell crack in his skin.

An hour or so later he feels wetness running down his leg and looks down to find the Band-Aid soaked through.

"Fuck," he mutters, pro forma, and crosses the basement workshop to pull a first aid kit from the shelf. Even after all these years he still doesn't like blood or needles; seeing it makes him want to curl up and protect himself. But with his own body it's a sort of terrible fascination. Not unlike looking at the underbelly of a car.

He sits down on the floor and pulls his leg in front of him. There are little strips of torn skin around the gash. He pokes at it ungently: a fresh well of blood. His hands don't shake— they never do. He holds his nervousness in the vertical axis of his body. Locked in his jaw, his shoulders, away from his extremities. Too easy to let it leak out of him otherwise.

The stitches turn out neat and even. He sits back for a moment to admire his handiwork before washing the blood off his hands.

When he goes back upstairs, the construction crew redoing the floors and ceilings from Wanda's breakout stunt eye his rolled-up pant leg a little balefully.

"Carry on, I'm outta your hair," he says, and walks down the hall to Administration and Logistics. He'll probably get to ignore at least three more calls from Ross today. What a satisfying thought.

 

* * *

 

Rhodey calls him most nights. He’s gone back to Columbia Medical for more tests and PT since Tony fitted him for bionic exoskeletal braces, which he’s getting better at using— he can walk unassisted for several meters at a time now, and if he’s frustrated that there hasn’t been a miracle in recovery, it doesn’t show except for some tighter lines in his face. He’s got a count-my-blessings attitude toward everything he takes on these days, and Tony isn’t sure if he’s supposed to be looking for the cracks in the facade. Had this been a part of Rhodey, before? Had it existed in him, this unflagging forward gaze, latent and unmagnified until he’d started needing it? Or is this a new growth, and if so, a spring birth or a cancer?

It pisses Tony off that he doesn’t know. So much so that he feels like there’s something hard and unyielding taking up space in his chest again, but there’s only scar tissue under his palm when he goes to rub at his sternum.

“Hey,” Rhodey says tonight. “They’re talking about your kid around here. Someone got a video of him saving a cat from a tree in some playground in Queens? That’s— jeez, that’s some cute— that’s kiddie stuff, you know that, right? If that's his normal level, then Leipzig was a—”

“You _saw_ him, Rhodey. You saw him, tell me how good _you_ think he is— he's better than I was when I first started out, he's—"

“How old is he, Tony?”

Tony slumps into his chair.

“That even a question I wanna hear the answer to?”

A soft, ugly silence.

“I thought we were the ones with the law here,” says Rhodey.

“I know. Rhodey, I know— _I know._ ”

“The UN can't find out.”

“Yeah.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “I’m keeping him safe.”

“Safe, now, huh. That suit?”

“Suit,” Tony agrees. “Impressive, right? You have no idea how fast I threw that together. I mean, the design I’d had for months, because you never know when things like that come in handy— you really _do_ never know, turns out, ha, fuck.” He bares his teeth. “Hey, you know what, I could— no, never mind.”

“What is it?”

“Don’t worry about it. Just an idea.”

“Oh, now that worries me a whole lot.”

“Fuck off, Rhodes. That got old thirty years ago.”

“Thirty years.” Rhodey exhales. “Jesus fucking shit,we’re old.”

“Speak for yourself, grandpa.”

“Yeah,” Rhodey says, scratching the back of his neck. “Figure it was about time I retired anyway.”

“Oh, so we’re joking about it now? Good to know. You know, I really thought humor was _my_ coping mechanism.”

“Yeah, well, hate to break it to you, but you ain’t unique.” Rhodey waves a hand. “Really though, it’s not like I wasn’t getting a bit too old to fly, so. If anything, it’s the— the lack of agency I’m upset about. I would’ve gone non-combatant in a couple of years on my own. Just wish I’d gotten to make that decision for myself. Yeah. That’s a whole can of worms in and of itself. Sorry, you know, it’s just—”

“No, okay, you are _absurdly_ optimistic given the circumstances,” says Tony. “Your therapist’s gotta think you’re crazy. Or hiding something. _Today, ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ Rhodes told me that he misses the Iron Patriot paint job. I recommend he be admitted to a psychiatric ward.”_

“Hey, how’d you get into those files, what about client confidentiality, you bastard,” Rhodey says, snickering.

“It's funny how you think that I have any respect for privacy at all," Tony replies.

They smile tiredly at each other for a second, and then Rhodey says, “Hey— early start tomorrow. I’m gonna settle in.”

“Yup,” Tony says. “See you soon, buddy.”

“Night, Tones.”

FRIDAY closes the window. He sits there for a moment, sinking into the couch.

“Pull up the files for War Machine mark… thirty-one. Exploded view, torso-down.”

On his tablet he designs schematics for a suit with a lower body prosthesis and laughs when he remembers that, nearly ten years ago, he’d claimed the suit itself was one.

Better not to tell Rhodey about this. Every time Tony asks him, it’s the same thing: that he doesn’t regret a single fight he’s fought, hasn’t changed his mind about any of the choices he’s made. And if he’s got no regrets, then what’s the point in imagining he could have acted differently along the way?

Tony wishes so badly he could be that sure of himself. Only fitting for a futurist. But he’s always been the last one to let go, the one who keeps looking back like a pillar of salt, the one who, impossibly, believes that things can go back to the way they once were.

 

* * *

 

The first thing he does when the construction crews move out of the residential wing of the compound is put Avengers Tower on the market. (Stupid, _stupid_ to think that his own hubris alone could keep them afloat over the city they’d saved, like patron gods or watchdogs, a goddamn world-saving frat— because what right did they have, really, to protect one city and level another?)

The War on Hydra. Some international relations professor at Princeton had coined that term in an NPR interview, a spoof of the War on Terror. Political pundits adopted it. The New York Times published an op ed by the same professor. _Hydra, War on_ is already an entry in the indices of the more recent editions of some history textbooks, so says Maria Hill.

He hasn't given that time in his life a name, himself _._ In that year he’d felt reborn and almost clean. He’d thought that things had been as serious as they could get. The self he’d left behind in that time had never imagined facing harsher realities; it’d been enough that he could feel bone-tired for weeks on end leading up to a mission. But then gratification came like clockwork: when they dismantled yet another Hydra cell and Pepper was still there to welcome him home; when Steve hadn’t minded sharing the same couch cushion with him on movie nights for no other reason than the fact that Tony got cold if he stayed still for too long; when Natasha, younger and wiser than almost all of them, would smile whenever he gave her newly-upgraded gauntlets back to her; when conversations with Bruce felt like a series of moving parts all seamlessly click-snapping into place.

So: how to move out of a hundred-story building you thought would house your life?

He calls Happy and asks him to manage the transport of Stark Tech out to their California facilities and all Avengers property up to the compound. If anyone’s pissed at him for uprooting R&D or high-level executive housing designations within the Tower, word doesn’t make its way to him.

He’s thankful for having been spared from that, at least.

Pepper buys herself a nice little brownstone on the Upper East Side. The commute from there to the new Stark Industries HQ takes an average of fourteen minutes. Or so FRIDAY tells him; he's never seen the place himself. He thinks about visiting her and bringing a housewarming gift— not strawberries, maybe chamomile tea and a Modigliani original, she’d probably like that— but all they've got in common now is SI, so it's not like he has any claim to her space anymore.

Neutral ground, then. Professional. Her company, her management, his name, his designs.

On a Thursday in late August, when the temperature is ninety-one degrees in the shade, Tony drives down to the city.

The route from the compound to the interstate is mostly backcountry road, farmland and woodland that's existed for centuries, an overlooked kind of permanence. Longer-lasting than anything he's ever built. But maybe in a few decades, the land will be bought out. Maybe he'll be the one buying it out, cutting everything down and bulldozing everything over to build another Tower, only newer, only better.

For a white-knuckled moment he hates this so much that he can’t fucking stand it, thinks, _please, please, good fucking god, you gotta make sure you don’t do it._

This is why Pepper’s sitting in that glass-paneled office instead of him. That kind of control belongs in hands like hers, patient and premeditated.

He's— a mechanic, a problem-solution thinker. Things around him tend to happen on the spot, or else he makes it so. It had guided him onto the battlefield, where impulsivity became improvisation became rapid response became lives saved, threats neutralized. It had made him and Rogers alike, only Tony wasn’t the type of entitled that expected people to follow his orders.

_Look where we are now, Cap, you son of a bitch. Hope you've been eating okay._

Tony had taken the fallen shield with him, when he'd finally been able to pry himself out of the dead suit and stand. He'd picked it up and held it limply down at his side, unable to look at it out of some kind of extraordinary grief— for whom, he still isn't sure. Maybe for his mom and dad all over again, maybe for the breaking of that final tenure of faith that had endured, like the vestiges of childhood, because he'd been too afraid to see the kind of world that meant it could not exist. That couldn't be his future, no, only it was. Is.

There are only a handful of people scattered across the globe that know this grief, or at least enough of it to lose sleep over its weight.

 _Better than to let the whole world carry it on their shoulders,_ he thinks. _Don’t shrug._

But strange that he’d chosen to let a kid in on it too. A kid who probably still keeps Cap merch in his room, who probably knows fuck-all about the Accords or Lagos or, hell, Sokovia or— _probably thinks the Avengers are one big happy family—_

And Tony had knelt close to him, strapped him up in big-boy boots, and told him that his hero was human: that he was wrong, that he had chinks in his armor to be exploited. That wasn’t the breaking of faith, not really, more like innocence.

Which is fine. That bubble gets popped sooner than later. Tony, growing up with the knowledge that he’d eventually be pulling a lot of strings in the global theatre of war and trade, had understood the arms race with an exclusive, front-row-seat perspective by age twelve. An inhuman child designing assault rifles before his voice had even dropped.

But if he tugs on that thread, here’s what slips through:

Maria coming in and standing over his shoulder, saying, _Howard, what on earth are you having him_ do? _He’s a_ boy, _not another one of your engineers._

 _Well, he’s going to be,_ Howard replying, a little petulantly. _So he’d do well with a head start._

_—yes, cars and computers, useful things, peaceful things—_

_—the world isn’t peaceful, Maria, and he’s going to be in it. If I’m gonna have an heir—_

_—he’s your_ son, _for God’s sake!_

 _It’s fine, Mom,_ Tony saying. _I like making ‘em. It’s fun._

Right up until it stopped being fun, but by then all his habits were decades old, his brain already permanently a weapon. Dad had made sure of that. Tony’d made sure of it too, wasn’t that what Iron Man was? Proof that he was half robot, half weapon.

“Fuck,” he mutters, squeezing his eyes shut. He slams his fist on the wheel; the car lets out a single, startled honk. “Fuck!”

He’s fucked it up, hasn’t he. He always fucks it up. How could he think it was okay to— to make that out of a kid, to— fuck, he needs to get out of his own head. Get someone to help see for him.

 _Well you’re in luck,_ he thinks, accelerating on the gas.

 

* * *

 

“Hey Pepper,” Tony says as lightly as he can, trying to ignore the stiffening of her shoulders that’s been happening whenever he talks to her lately. “You eaten yet? I got you something.”

She looks down at the container of caesar salad he sets at the edge of her desk, then up at him. “Thank you, Tony. How are you?”

“Good. Vision and I are uh, renovating. Just about done, actually. You— you good?”

“Just fine,” she says, her best business smile on her face.

“Yeah? You sure? What’s been going on?” Maybe she does need that Modigliani; he’ll have it delivered. Or a new pair of Jimmy Choos, or—

“Is this a social visit?” she asks wryly. “I’m very busy, Tony.”

Definitely the Modigliani, then.

“Uh, it _was,”_ he says. “But actually— okay, um, awkward question. So if I were to have hypothetically acquired a new responsibility in the form of a real, live child, as in, I gotta make sure he’s safe and—”

“You what,” Pepper says flatly. “Tony, you _what._ ”

“I’m pretty sure you’ve seen him on YouTube. I’ve been following him for a while. He was with us at Leipzig, which, I know”—he waves his hands—“terrible judgment on my part, taking a teenager into combat against supersoldiers, except it wasn’t _actually_ terrible judgment, so hey, it’s all good.”

Pepper pinches the bridge of her nose. “So just to make this one hundred percent abundantly clear, this kid isn’t— isn’t _yours._ In the biological sense.”

“—Oh, Jesus Christ, no.” Tony stares at her. “No, Pepper, no, I didn’t go and _impregnate—_ Christ, I never cheated on you. I’d never do that.”

“I know, Tony,” Pepper says softly.

“I—” he says.

And that’s just it: perhaps she’s known him for too long. Perhaps she prefers who he was before Afghanistan, before Iron Man, before all of it, and that’s what makes him sick. That he’d finally grown up like everyone had wanted him to for decades, finally stopped needing someone to tell him when to eat and sleep and how to dress and act and when he wasn’t allowed to be drinking or fucking someone— that, perhaps, he’d outgrown his need for her somewhere along the way to becoming someone whose legacy he could stand to leave behind. That she still might be trying to reconcile him with a person whose skin he’d begun to shed a decade ago.

“What did you want to ask me?” she says, after a while.

He struggles for a moment to change tacks, to will the words back into his mouth.

“So if I had the responsibility of kind of… being a mentor-slash-father-figure to an impressionable teenager, how would I go about… not fucking it up?”

She gazes at him and it’s almost— mournful. “You know that I don’t have a clue when it comes to kids.”

“Yeah, but.” He makes a face. “Considering you’re one of the most responsible people I know.”

There’s a beat of struggling silence which Tony is intimately familiar with: the _get it together, Tony needs this of me_ silence that is signature to Pepper.

“Then I’d tell you to be honest with him,” she says. “Don’t sugarcoat things, no matter how much you think he needs it.”

“Okay,” he says.

“Make sure you give him credit wherever he deserves it. Appreciate what he does.”

“Yeah.”

“And when… when he gets into trouble and worries the hell out of you, tell him.”

Tony nods, says, “thanks, Pep,” past the lump in his throat, because sometimes, even though there’s all this buried history between the two of them now, he still feels like she’s his soulmate.

When he gets home, he shuts himself into the lab. This is an old habit. One that gets him young enough. He sits at the center of the room, feet bare and tucked under himself. There's a godawful itch in his brain and his fingertips that won’t stop no matter how hard he tries to turn it off.

Maybe this is his version of a gut reaction, he thinks, and that's how he knows he's gone. That night he buries himself in armor upgrades. No matter how many times he tells himself that he's done with this, done with the obsession, he can't—

 

* * *

 

So maybe this is another one of his vices. The hardest one of all to quit.

He wakes up sometime before dawn with his cheek pressed into the worktable. His neck aches like it never did when this used to happen, but at least for once he isn’t hungover.

He’ll never be hungover again in his life, not if he can help it. That’s a worse vice right there.

“Tony,” comes a horribly familiar voice.

“Guh,” he says, and lifts his head to look at Vision standing a few feet away, wincing as the soreness flares in his shoulders. “How’d you get in here?”

“You haven't installed a security system specific to this laboratory yet,” Vision says. “Also, you have a flight to New Delhi in four hours.”

“What are you, my assistant?”

There's a pause. “I was.”

“No you weren't.”

“I have his memories.”

“That's a pretty big memory.”

“It is. If it technically counts as mine”—Vision tilts his head—“well.”

“Well, hey, you don’t talk like him. You don’t act like him. You're a real boy now. Sorry I didn't make it to your second birthday party.”

“Quite a shame,” Vision deadpans. “There was cake. And party favors.”

“Yeah, well. Tabloids say I’m no fun at parties anymore. Guess I’m a real boy now too.”

“It’s strange how accurately that expression applies,” says Vision. “I— I think— you’ll forgive me for saying this, because it’s true— my predecessor was a two-dimensional being. I remember what it was like to have solely that dimension’s capability to… to fathom, if you will. The sole capacities in which he was brought to so-called life were by your programming and his time spent learning from the sources of information he was exposed to, which, while we both know were quite extensive, were not enough to instill sentience into him. And I think, if you took the exact code that he had and the same memory dump and re-uploaded them onto your servers, you would be able to achieve JARVIS in the moment he— died. But”—he taps his forehead— “if this new JARVIS were to really truly be brought to life somehow, as I was, I believe he and I would not recognize each other as identical beings. In the same way identical twins share the same DNA and yet are different. It’s an intangible variable, this force of life… the unpredictability of sentience.” He raises a hand and gestures levelly with it. “Ultron was a drastic example.”

Tony exhales hard through his nose. “Did you need something?”

“I’m sorry,” Vision says. “For all the pain I’ve caused you.”

He shakes his head at Vision and gets up slowly, rolling his shoulders. Jesus, talking to this guy is like having five different migraines at once. “Nothing you can do about it.”

“Even so.” Vision shoots his cuffs in such a dry movement that Tony can’t help but feel that some part of Edwin Jarvis has survived through two subsequent iterations. “I expect you know a good amount about guilt. Or regret, at least. I also expect that you still blame me for what happened with Colonel Rhodes.”

“If you’re complaining, you should see the laundry list of shit I still blame myself for,” Tony says, stepping into the elevator.

“I’m not complaining,” Vision says. “But that’s a cruel mode of non-hypocrisy, isn’t it, to put so much of the blame on yourself so as to justify blaming others? It _is_ just, in a certain capacity, but it’s not quite fair.”

“Price of accountability, pal,” Tony murmurs to his blurred reflection in the steel elevator doors.

He makes the flight to New Delhi alone. Midway over the Atlantic, he discovers that the company jets haven't been upgraded in twenty-two months, and spends the next couple of hours throwing together different options for R&D to look at.

Over the week he meets with the Minister of Commerce about access to black tea and rice Intellicrop genetic codes, then a Stark subsidiary about StarkPhone and StarkTablet distribution. Sales are good, a universal constant. Still, probably he'd be better at selling weapons. The files have long since been deleted and purged from any servers anywhere, but he knows the blueprints of a Jericho missile as vividly as he had ten years ago with his head shoved underwater, choking with the effort not to breathe.

There are some days where Tony thinks he could stand to be CEO, be pretty good at it. Enough to live up to Howard's memory and keep the board happy and revolutionize a hundred and one different tech fields and cure global hunger and privatize world peace, and. And.

But those are also the days where he thinks he could blow up all his suits again and the blueprints to go with them and stay in retirement indefinitely, so what does that tell you.

Even so, he's a pretty solid businessman. He's been schmoozing and making deals for so long that he doesn’t know if it's practice or instinct anymore.

"Times are good in the Stark empire," he murmurs into the quiet of his hotel room.

He shows up at the patio party of some software company COO whom Pepper says he's gotta make nice with because SI's planning to buy them up in a couple months. People shower him with wreaths of fresh flowers. Drinks flow like goodwill. He makes a game out of seeing how close he can get to taking a sip without succumbing. He grins back at women who smile at him from across the lawn; yeah, he's still got it. A dry, scientific sense of self-satisfaction. Libido used to be an itch he couldn't not scratch. No reason not to, anyhow. He doesn't know when he forgot to feel like that.

He's on the phone with someone— who?— oh, the kid. The kid with a guilt complex and a savior complex indistinguishable from each other. Par for the course. The kid who—

—wants to catch black market arms dealers on his own now. How cute. Tony clasps his hands together and digs nails into the backs of his knuckles. Jesus, a fucking kid. Won't he just— stay the fuck home, mind his own business, go to school, care about stupid kid things—

_Why?_

"Because I said so!" he snaps. Heads turn to stare. He feels hot and itchy in the sunlight. He could crawl out of his own skin.

The vodka shikanji— the familiar bitter undertone against his lips— this is an itch he hasn't forgotten how to tend towards. He wipes his mouth on his sleeve. Then his tongue, surreptitiously, turning away from the throng of people. Most of them are no doubt watching him. The taste lingers: the feeling of backing away from a cliff.

The engine of his car roars to life; with it, the promise of speed and leaving everything behind. For a moment he really does feel weightless again.

 

* * *

 

What does he remember about being fifteen? Not much. Definitely not a sense of obligation. Guilt, yes, but that was more about weekend benders and his brief foray into coke than anything noble. Oh, he'd met Rhodey that year. You could smell the ROTC on him. Tony had resented his respectability for a while before acknowledging that he was grateful towards this guy for keeping him afloat. The pre-Pepper Pepper, not above bribery with greasy diner food to get him to class. On Tony's own dime, yeah, but that was plenty fair.

So the kid is something different. To fifteen-year-old Tony he'd have been a separate species. Something higher, more pristine. A creature with a map built in. Maybe not a self-preservation instinct, sure, but that’s more or less a foregone conclusion in the line of duty.

 

* * *

 

Once back at the compound, Tony shucks his suit jacket and flings it onto the dresser. He sighs.

"Mr. Stark," comes Vision's voice. "I... have made soup for dinner, if you're hungry. Minestrone."

"I'm good," he says. "I ate on the plane. I think I'll sleep off the jetlag."

"Then shall I put the soup in the refrigerator for later?"

Tony turns around. Vision's expression is wide and open like some kind of overgrown child. Jesus fuck.

"Oh, what the hell," says Tony. "I'll have a bowl or something."

 

* * *

 

He’s at a gala, half-considering emptying his wallet to the bartender to bribe her from serving him, when a young blond man approaches him, smiling widely.

“Mr. Stark,” says the man, extending a hand. Tony can feel him trying to dominate the handshake. Cocky, brilliant looking. An archetype Tony knows how to insinuate himself with like slipping into a pair of old, broken-in shoes. “I’m a film producer for—”

“I know who you are,” Tony says, flashing his teeth. “Everything declassified about my old man is over at Stark PR. Give them a call and they’ll give you a whole dossier on him, if you ask nicely. But just so you know, there’s been about five different biopics about him in the past thirty years, and they all start to blend together after a while, so—”

“Oh no,” says the golden boy. “I’m not looking to do a Howard Stark biopic. I’m looking to do a Tony Stark biopic.”

“Uh-huh,” Tony says. He’s still smiling. His hands are clenched around his glass of sparkling water. “Over my dead body, pal.”

The golden boy blinks and recovers. “Mr. Stark—”

“My life isn’t over yet, you know.” It’s almost like a reminder. It’s almost gentle. “Tell you what, when they crack my corpse out of a crumpled-up suit, you can say whatever you want about me. Until then…”

Not long after that he slips onto a balcony and calls for a suit. He doesn’t check the news the next morning, and silences his phone after Pepper calls him four times in a row.

 

* * *

 

When he thinks back on the kid's press conference afterwards— yeah, it _was_ half a test. He'd wanted to see what the kid would do. If he'd hold up to all those things he'd said to Tony on his creaky little twin bed in his cramped apartment bedroom, in that kind of life someone could live out completely undiscovered. But people who live undiscovered end up being the ones who crave recognition, daydream about it, never see it realized. And, well. What kind of fifteen-year-old underdog doesn't want fame and respect?

But it was only half a test. Do you see? Tony has— had the Tower, a mansion on Long Island he hasn't returned to in twenty years, a smattering of properties up and down the West Coast. He has the Avengers compound and barely anyone to fill it. Sometimes he really does feel like he's rattling around a mansion on his own, just like Cap said.

He steps out into a room full of reporters. Camera shutters click like beating wings. His sunglasses are on.

After the press conference is over, Tony holds out the ring in the palm of his hand.

"You should keep it," he tells Pepper.

She stares down at it. "Tony—"

"It doesn't mean anything," he says, fighting to keep the begging tone out of his voice. "Shove it in the back of a desk drawer for all I care— hell, sell it, melt it down— but Pepper, I can't keep it. It's not mine. I can't carry it with me— I can't—"

She takes his outstretched hand very gently in one of hers. She closes her other hand around the ring.

"Okay, Tony," she says, and of course she understands— she understands everything about him, except for why his life revolves around suits and missions instead of Stark Industries and her— "I'll give it back when you're ready."

She's a vestige of his past life that has carried over. He loves her so damn much; she tempts him as all hell. But even all his money can't give him two lives in one, and so she stands, sensible and stable, across a chasm. A couple years ago he could not have imagined her saying no. But now he doesn't need her to say yes anymore. Marrying Pepper— well, maybe he has a dream of that world, and it is such a very nice dream. But this life will never end. Theirs is a wedding that will never come.

He stares down at the ground in front of him. “Good. Thank you.”

She touches his face, knuckles to cheek. She looks sad, but it’s a different kind of sad than he used to make her.

“Look at you,” she says.

“Yeah, I know I’m not as pretty as I used to be.” He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “Botox is absolutely out of the question, but I’ll consider hair dye. I could go with something a bit more bronze, a little bit sun bleached, don’t you think, that’d be very SoCal. Helps me look like I give less of a shit than I do. Come on. It’s a good idea and you know it.”

She laughs and rolls her eyes. He kisses her on the cheek. They draw apart.

"It's not that I don't want this, Tony," she begins, suddenly pensive.

"I know," he says. "Me too." And she’s there for a moment more— and then she’s gone.

So by the end of the day he gains neither the kid nor the love of his life. But there are moments of unexpected mercy in his life as in all others, he thinks, five days later, as Rhodey limps off the Quinjet and stumbles into Tony's hug; somehow it hurts less than Tony expected to see this cruel evidence of an aftermath— Rhodey's making his peace with it, so maybe Tony can too. Maybe he's finally learning to process things like a healthy human being. It's a terrifying thought.

“Good to see you,” Rhodey says. “Been a long few months, hasn’t it.”

“Yeah, it has.” Tony puts a hand on his shoulder and guides him inside. “It certainly has.”

 

* * *

 

It's a post-everything world. He's a changed man in these new times, once again. Could be a low point if he didn't feel— smarter. A shell cracked open. Maybe this was really him all along. But he'd felt like that after SI's first step in the new direction, after the Avengers had begun to gel— Jesus, after he'd retired from combat missions after Ultron. He wonders if he'll ever stop feeling like he's got nothing more to expect from life.

Should probably stop being so bad at predicting the future. Bad for business. But god, what next? Hasn't everything that could happen already happened?

Premise: Murphy’s Law deals you a shittier draw the larger your life is.

Conclusion: with his luck, they're due for another potentially world-ending catastrophe soon.

Shit, he'd have to fight in that, wouldn't he. He'd have to recruit a fuck ton more people. Liaise with the US military. Foreign militaries.

He'd have to open up that desk drawer and pick up the burner phone and dial.

At least he's gotten more self-aware over the years: the Avengers will hate each other until the world can't afford for them to do so anymore. Maybe then they'll look each other in the eye again, shake hands. And they— they won't say sorry because they can't; all of them were right about all the wrong things, and chances are they still aren't fighting for the same future, but they'll be fighting together all the same.

He sees, without even closing his eyes, the faces of all his old friends. Drawn up like old locked-away files late at night, still clean, untarnished. Like Dad's old things in storage. Kept in perfect memory. Maybe no one looks at them anymore except for him.

But this is incorrect, he thinks. It's not their memories that he has to preserve. It's not up to him to be their keeper; they don't want or need him to be. They're alive, living parallel to him. They're all hurtling towards some kind of future together.

_Meet you there._

 

* * *

 

Tony has known Rhodey longer than he's known anyone else, and somehow their absurd brotherhood has survived through their fratty college years, drunken engineering projects, CEO-hood and Air Force training and deployment and a whole entire professional relationship and countless women who've long since come and gone and kidnappings and estrangement and near-death experiences and retirement and—

Safe to say that they'd survive through nuclear war and nuclear winter, too. But it is a luxury to have Rhodey here on the same couch as him, tongue in his teeth as he battles Ganondorf onscreen. Tony’s gratitude could displace oceans.

"You and me, buddy," Tony says, "we're gonna be like cockroaches at the end of the world."

Rhodey snorts. "Fighting cockroaches," he says, punctuating it with a swipe of his nunchuck.

"Cockroaches with repulsor boots."

"Cockroaches with bionic legs."

"Uh-huh. You and me, we're gonna make it to the future someday."

 

 

.

.

.

 

 

 

 

> _Every story has its chapter in the desert, the long slide from kingdom_
> 
> _to kingdom through the wilderness,_
> 
> _where you learn things, where you're left to your own devices._

Richard Siken, _Driving, Not Washing_

 

**II. A PIECE OF YOUR PEACE OF MIND**

 

He flies the kid up to the compound every few weeks or so. It gets to be like a habit after a while, routine enough that Peter's got a few changes of clothes in the dresser in his suite and the pantry's stocked with his midnight snack cereal. Which if he eats only on bad nights, Tony keeps reminding him, soon he won’t be able to stomach plain Cheerios ever again.

"Well, I figured I should stick to one brand or else I’ll be ruined for cereal in general," is what Peter says in response.

He’s easy to talk to, not a conversationalist in the way everyone had been at Mom's soirees, growing up on Long Island, but like he hasn't figured out when to lie and when to tell the truth. He’s never had to play that game.

Is he what Natasha sees when she looks at everyone? A field study into some other life. She'd kept snacks in the communal fridge like it was a luxury. When Tony was designing her floor of the Tower, he had asked her, _what color do you want your walls? Gimme some colors, c'mon. You want wallpaper— hey, you like art? Pepper likes art. I can get you some art—_ and for the first time he'd known her, she had looked a little lost.

He’s surprised to find that he misses her. A whole lot. But of course he does; stupid of him to think that he wouldn’t. Probably she’d made sure of that as soon as she learned they’d be part of the same team. She was good like that. Fucking scary like that. Some kind of all-purpose girl: she’d be whoever you wanted her to be. A friend, a best friend, a confidant, a sister. Easiest of all: someone to trust.

What color is her hair now? Chestnut? Strawberry blonde. No, she'd said she was going platinum next. Just her kind of humor for that to be true.

She could bleed a stone for answers. Somehow she was okay with that kind of ability sitting in her brain. Had Howard been? Underneath all that white hair must have been memories of field testing at Trinity. Had he touched the bomb before its detonation? Maybe that was why— the scotch, and all. Maybe that was why he'd never—

Bomb-building hands can't hold a child, that's the thing. Yup.

He thinks a lot about Howard these days, not so much as a dad but as a guy. Someone who’d pretty much had his fill of living his life before Tony had even been born; this had been intentional on Howard’s part, obviously.

Towards the end of his life, Tony had grown a little less hurt. A little less angry. He thinks, now, that if Howard had lived, they might have drifted into understanding of one another as like-minded men. Something good enough for business. But then Tony would have molded himself into someone who was, more than anything else, the son of Howard Stark. And with the both of them in control, Obadiah wouldn’t have been a problem— but being old enough to know Howard’s secrets, Tony would personally know the bitter taste of SHIELD eating itself up from the inside out. So maybe still he’d take the long way around to learning how to be accountable for every level of operations below him.

Howard would be there, too, learning with him.

But he likes having done it on his own, no one to guide his convictions. In this part of his story he owns himself. He’s the one who has to sit at the helm and look out into the great black fucking night and show himself the way. Maybe Howard never figured that out, never knew what he was stumbling towards, and so through his fear could not take a child by the hand and say, _I’ll show you how to get to the right future._

He thinks that he maybe— recognizes Howard. The kinds of things and people he had the stomach for, the kinds he didn’t. A kid was just someone who’d arrived into Howard’s life a little too early to be useful, unless that kid could manage not to be a kid.

In Peter he sees this absolutely visceral desire for information: truth, strong as any chemical craving. It’s a goddamn miracle if his faith hasn’t broken yet.

"Before I met you— well, before I knew you," Peter says tonight, pouring milk onto his Cheerios, "I kinda worshipped Iron Man."

"And then you got up close and nasty. I know, my pores are _shockingly_ large— no, it’s okay, you can say it— but how you wound me, kid, we can’t all look fresh out of the womb. What, did it get too real for you? Too human?"

"Yeah," Peter agrees, and then, because kindness is as easy to him as bluntness, "but I kinda like it this way."

"Sure, why not? I let you test drive a one-of-a-kind Audi on weekends, obviously knowing me has its perks."

"Tony."

They face off on opposite sides of the kitchen island. Peter could look like a kid playing pretend at being an adult, Tony thinks, his ever-present solemnity incongruous with his rounded baby face. But more likely he’ll grow into it soon, among other things, like needing to shave in the mornings.

"One of my friends has this— whole thing," Peter says, "about how information is a privilege."

"Huh," says Tony, used to these characteristic non sequiturs by now. "I predict... career intelligence, for him. Homeland Security or NSA."

"Nah, she doesn't really trust the government all that much," Peter says, chewing, and then when Tony rolls his eyes at that, "isn't it the same with you?"

"Yeah, but unlike her, I actually know enough of what's going on to justify said distrust."

"And what, no one else does? Some things _do_ get publicized, you know, shit does leak out to the masses eventually. Like Iran-Contra, Operation Condor, SHIELDgate. Even if information is a privilege, the rest of us do put the pieces together."

"That what you learn in history class?"

"I'm expecting a five when AP results come out." Peter shuffles in his chair a little. "Actually, I, uh, I'm working on my final right now? And I was wondering if I could interview you or something?"

"Your final?"

"It's a research paper. I need sources and stuff. My teacher said it was okay to use you."

"A paper about what? The Avengers?" Tony scrubs his face. Jesus, the kid does history projects at a STEM high school. Talk about a try-hard.

"War on Terror."

"Christ, you’re gonna kill me."

"Yeah, um, I totally get why if you don't wanna do this, like really. I just had to—"

"No, you're fine," Tony says. "Just don't sell this to The Atlantic or wherever when you're done."

"Why would I?" He sounds genuinely curious.

"You know, I don’t think I’ve ever given an honest interview to the press."

Peter blinks at him.

"What?" Tony says.

He shakes his head. "Nothing. Just— don't skew the story here? For my academic cred."

Tony sighs. "Will do. Get your notecards and your tape recorder, kid."

Peter lifts the cereal bowl to his face and chugs down what milk that’s left, then takes out his phone— that's modern journalism for you, Tony supposes— and pulls up a list of questions and turns on his voice recorder app.

Later Tony remembers it as less a conversation than a transcript, because that's what it is, really— there's Peter's face in front of him, sitting in the kitchen like he belongs here, and he does, in a lot of ways; the pantry is stocked with his cereal, his stress brand and his normal one, and he's washed his hands and his bowl and spoon and mug in the kitchen sink plenty enough times— but his voice isn't a real human voice in that moment, just some words on a piece of paper, and so is Tony's.

He said he'd stick to the truth. Not pretend, for anyone's sake, that these weren't words that would be listened to again and again, quoted, slapped with the BILLIONAIRE INDUSTRIALIST AND FORMER WEAPONS MANUFACTURER TONY STARK label. Even if only by the kid and his teacher. But minimal exposure equals minimal damage, as Pepper would say; he could do a lot worse.

Tony has hosted lots of journalists in his homes before. There is no such thing as a safe zone with them. They’ve called those homes things like _the definition of a bachelor pad_ and _decorated for show_ and _the modern-day incarnation of conspicuous consumption_ — rendered his own space impersonal to him. Now that’s a real kind of evil.

But something about the fact that Peter isn’t a journalist makes him even brutaller: see, ultimately this interview won’t even be about Tony. But so many wars and homes and bodies have been riddled through with Tony Stark’s shrapnel that somewhere amid the classic big talk of _counterterrorism_ and _for the good of the American people,_ he has undoubtedly been a perpetrator.

 _Shut your eyes and don’t listen,_ he wants to say. But he doesn’t. He owes this kid that much.

[EXCERPT: INTERVIEW BETWEEN PETER PARKER AND BILLIONAIRE AND FORMER WEAPONS MANUFACTURER TONY STARK, MARCH 2018]

PETER PARKER: How did the War on Terror change in 2008, for both you and the world?

BILLIONAIRE INDUSTRIALIST AND FORMER WEAPONS MANUFACTURER TONY STARK: Well, I got kidnapped. It got personal. I was made aware of a lot of things, which isn’t as hard as it sounds if you start drinking about sixty percent less than you did the previous year. I realized that if I had such a high level of disregard for human lives, then it didn’t matter if I was on the US military's side— I might as well have been dealing directly to groups like the Ten Rings. I mean, I technically was… Anyway, I shut it all down. The War on Terror, however applicable you think that term is, is about eliminating terror threats to the US and to global citizens. Can’t do that if my weapons are flowing to both us and them.

PP: And Iron Man? How did he change the game?

BIAFWMTS: I was a counter-terror unit all on my own, wasn’t I? That was pretty cool. Those were the days. I thought I’d single-handedly gotten world peace under my control. Simpler times, that’s what I’m saying. I don’t know if you remember, or if you were old enough to understand it at the time. You were, what… five? Six?

PP: About that, yeah.

BIAFWMTS: Yeah. Iron Man… basically eradicated what you’d call your typical garden-variety terrorist organization. Your whole… jihadist, extremist, Islamist thing. All your -ists. That kind of thing doesn't exist anymore.

PP: So in that era, terrorism still held geographical and religious connotations.

BIAFWMTS: That’s right.

PP: What changed that? What prompted the shift from garden-variety terrorism to… this fancy new idea of terrorism that we have now?

BIAFWMTS: You know, I think part of that definition— because it’s about perspective, it’s about how we classify these threats. That’s what they teach you in history, right? The difference is— or, well, the question is: how touchable is the continental United States? How close to home can they hit? There's 9/11, which was shitty and terrifying, sure, but then there's the Battle of New York, which is a whole different ballgame. So, new idea of terrorism, new idea of counter-terrorism— the Avengers. I throw a nuke through a wormhole, boom, we’re done. Then there’s homegrown terrorism, like AIM and Hydra-in-SHIELD—

PP: Groups which you were instrumental in helping to take down.

BIAFWMTS: Groups which I was instrumental in helping to create.

PP: You— what?

BIAFWMTS: Aldrich Killian. Maya Hansen. Don’t put this in your paper. It’s ten thousand different levels of classified. You won’t be able to back it up with any other sources. I— well, I helped turn them over to the dark side.

PP: I’ve never heard about that.

BIAFWMTS: Like I said, classified. Do you want me to tell you about it?

PP: Sure, absolutely.

BIAFWMTS: A famous man once said, “We create our own demons.” Don’t know who, but it wasn’t me. I’m quoting him. So that’s basically getting said by two well-known guys— no, you know what? I don’t want to talk about this. Can we get back on topic? What’s your next question, kid? Read me your next question.

PP: Would you consider the War on Hydra and other Avengers-driven campaigns that primarily involve enhanced and/or extraterrestrial threats to be a specific branch of the War on Terror, or a departure from quote-unquote traditional terrorism?

BIAFWMTS: Oh, the perspective question. Great. I do _real_ science, not political science, so I doubt I’m your best guy on that.

PP: But—

BIAFWMTS: Hold on, I’m talking. You know who actually thinks a lot about this? Vision. You should ask him after this. He has a whole speech ready, I’m sure. Anyway, here’s my answer: it is a departure from traditional terrorism, as well as a departure from the way we used to combat it— from the Iraq and Afghanistan years, absolutely. It’s a separate war from what it used to be. But that doesn’t change why we fight, and it doesn’t change the fact that, internationally speaking, we citizens of Earth have common enemies. That’s a uniting front. And if those enemies want to destabilize said common front, we’re going to have to do better to not let them. Next time... God, I sound like— goddamn speeches he makes [sic]—

PP: Do you see the Avengers as having had a positive effect on the world? Has the initiative been successful in its mission statement?

BIAFWMTS: We caused a lot of our own problems. Loki coming to Earth, Ultron… the shitshow in Lagos. I’d like to say that we were pretty effective in mitigating those problems, but I think that there have been a couple too many lives lost to throw around words like “effective.”

PP: As a whole, how do you feel about your own personal role in the War on Terror? Has your impact been largely positive or negative?

BIAFWMTS: I’m just trying to fix things. A couple years ago I got too ambitious and tried to fix everything. I wanted to be able to privatize world peace again, in a larger, colder world. That didn’t work, obviously, so I backed off. For now I’m just doing what I can, helping the world where I can. The September Foundation and the Stark Relief Foundation are the most positive things I’ve ever helped to create. And I’m very proud that they exist.

PP: Uh, well—

"So that’s all I got," says Peter, stopping the recording. Tony watches him type _tony - interview_ into the name label. "Thanks for, uh, your honesty, I guess."

Tony makes a face and waves his hand. "Now here's a question for you."

"Shoot."

"Why me? There's millions of more credible sources out there."

Peter shrugs and stands up to put his bowl in the sink. "I don't like research."

Tony must give him a look or something, like, _you expect me to believe that's all there is to it?_ because then Peter says, almost pouting, "No, seriously. My teacher's making us use this database called JSTOR, and I can't deal with that. Too many versions of history to pick and choose from."

"And what, you thought mine would be the best available option?"

"It'd probably be the most thorough," Peter says matter-of-factly.

Tony stares. "Did... you miss the whole thing about how I was drunk for most of my twenties and thirties?"

"Doesn't matter."

"Like _hell_ it doesn't—"

"Okay, maybe it does matter that you partied too hard and had too much sex or whatever to notice the double-dealing," says Peter, even as the tips of his ears get red with embarrassment, the nerd, "but you were still _there._ And you know what, that's way fucking better than reading presidential speeches or the PATRIOT Act, because you're the only person high up enough on the ladder to see what's going on who'll also give me the truth." His shoulders are tucked forward like a dog with its hackles up— _my God,_ Tony thinks, _he really is dangerous; look at that, it's bleeding through him_. "Because guess what, access to information _is_ a frickin' privilege."

By now he's breathing hard, but so is Tony.

"That’s bullshit," Tony snaps. "You think people wanna know the things I know? Christ, the shit I have sitting in my brain," he says, laughing bitterly, "most people, if they knew what it was like, they couldn't cope. Hell, some days I barely do."

"You call that protecting?" Peter asks, and Tony feels nausea sweep him like palladium poisoning.

“You don’t know what you’re you’re talking about.”

"Don’t I?” Peter looks at him levelly. “Everyone's been afraid these past few years. I'd know, I'm a kid on the ground. They don't wanna be coddled. They want the truth. Only thing is, we can't get to that truth ourselves, because we don't have the— the power, the means of access. So someone's gotta tell us. Like, look at the Avengers. Look at your parent organization, SHIELD. Lack of disclosure leads to distrust."

"You wanna know why people _actually_ don't trust the Avengers?" Tony asks. "The civilian death count, pal."

Peter's face turns funny, and Tony can see the moment when the fight, like blood, drains out of him. His head droops down. Boy oh boy, do they know how to get to each other. (It's a good thing. With Cap, it was accidental too much of the time.)

"It's all right, don't look at me like that, it's like I kicked your hybrid puppy children or something." He sucks his lower lip in. "I mean, it's not like I'll ever make my peace with it. Frankly that'd be— irresponsible. But there's, you know, things you can do, help balance out the ledger. Don't kill people, kid."

"Wasn't planning to. Instant Kill Mode? So overrated, man."

"Yeah," Tony says. "Yeah."

"You could just," Peter begins, sounding very tired and punch drunk, "you could just give people the truth. Information's capital. You're rich. You're sitting on a mountain of it. Your brain... knows things. Sees things... far off in the distance."

"Like a goddamn lighthouse."

"Uh-huh." The kid nests his chin on his folded arms. "Insight, dude. Broad scale."

"Thought you weren't about that, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man."

"Yeah, well. Isn't it— doesn't it go 'think globally, act locally' or something?"

"That's about supporting small business. I think." He blinks. "Technically I should discourage you from that. Stark products are superior, kid."

"Does it ever scare _you?_ "

"What?"

"How much of what's going on out there that you don't know."

Immediately he says, "I've been through a wormhole," harshly enough that it surprises him. He digs his nails into the flesh of his palms. "I don't even know how many light-years I was from Earth. If you don't think space doesn't freak me the fuck out. If."

Peter straightens up, unfolding out of his sleepy-kid-ness, and rests a hand on his shoulder. Tony breathes.

"If you don't think," he says, "that it doesn't make me feel useless that I can't foresee something as large-scale as global catastrophe— then you've been talking to a different Tony Stark."

This is a plea. Young people should not have to stay blind in order to reconcile themselves with the old fucks of the world. He has never wanted someone to see a lesser version of him before. But he needs Peter to— to—

"Nah, the one I know's always been a pretty big control freak. I know the guy who made Ultron." He tilts his head back to look at Tony.

Tony says, to quell something sour and painful rising up in him, "How many people do you think exist who can actually save the world?"

Peter shrugs. "You mean single-handedly? Probably zero."

"You're a real glass-half-full kinda guy, huh."

"Disillusionment of my generation," Peter responds. "No one saves the world solo. No robot or— or algorithm stops threats before they happen. Team effort, every time."

 _You sound like someone I know,_ he thinks. God forbid.

"Doesn't work with just one person thinking he's responsible for the entire thing. That's hella arrogant, dude."

 _It's not arrogant if it's the truth,_ Tony wants to say. It's not arrogant if you have the power to do it— because then you _have to._ No way around it. It's not arrogant when you made the whole goddamn world your drunken sandbox in your twenties and thirties and just now you're finally learning to clean up the mess. When you've got that kind of power, why isn't it as easy to do good as it is to fuck up?

Instead what he says is, "I don't wanna fight, kid."

"We're not fighting," Peter says. "S’just a little difference of opinion. Hit a slight ideological rift, is all."

"The last time that happened—"

Fear grips his chest, right around his reconstructed sternum. It blooms outward, a mushroom cloud, his own body the blast containment receptacle, until he can’t stand this awful thing inside of him and says, "You know what scares the shit out of me?"

"What?"

"I could have been— I could be wrong, about the whole thing. The Accords. I mean— I don't feel like I am. I feel like I'm right, but what if, just what if, in the whole grand, dictated cosmic order of the world, I'm... not. Then we're all fucked and split apart for nothing. My fault."

"Conviction," Peter says without blinking. "That’s it. That’s what you need. I know you know you've been wrong before, even when you did believe in what you were doing, but it’s worse if you do nothing. You don’t need me to explain the pros and cons of the Accords to you." He leans back in his chair. "And hey, following you was a conscious choice that we all made."

"So your conviction's banking on mine, huh," Tony says. "Because if I start thinking I was wrong, you come down with me. Just a whole lot of regret all around."

"What? No." Peter makes a face. "That’s not what I meant. No, it’s like, see, if you didn't believe in fighting for the Accords, then everyone would've followed, like, Rhodey instead. Well— you wouldn't have found me then, so I wouldn't have fought, but I'd still think you guys were right. I didn't do it because you told me to. I was _able_ to do it because you gave me the opportunity."

"Is that what you think?"

"Yeah, duh, wouldn’t’ve said it if I didn’t."

"I don't know, maybe you just wanna pretend to yourself that you have all the right answers," Tony says, just to be a little condescending. He picks up his tablet from the chair beside him and pulls up a 3-D holographic display of the Iron Spider suit.

"Maybe," Peter responds, unashamed, turning the schematics around to face him. Tony watches him take apart the armor layers to get to the energy core at the base of the neck, the hologram casting a pale blue light on his face. It gives him a haggard look.

"You never will, you know." Their eyes meet. "No one ever does."

"Yeah, well. Guess I can figure out some of them if I just try. Because tell you what," says Peter, like he's the adult here, "it scares the shit out of me too."

Scared. Too. That he doesn’t know the way to the solutions at an age when Tony hadn’t even been looking at the right equations. He doesn’t know how a kid can stand feeling so unsafe. But Peter does do it, does stand it, knowing that other life that he's foregoing. So he’s doing just fine, all things considered. It is staggering to think how much weight he can endure; Tony’s truths on top of that are a pretty scant addition. Tony’s hand on Peter’s shoulder would be more for his own peace of mind than Peter’s. But it would not be heavy for Peter. It would be hardly felt. Maybe even nothing harsh would diffuse across this barrier— there's an equal concentration of bad dreams between them, after all.

So: his hand, Peter’s exhaling shoulder. Somehow the kid even _feels_ young to him.

Tony looks at him and wonders how Howard could not have been proud of his own kid. Because— because— _Dad,_ he thinks, _I can't believe how lucky I am._

**Author's Note:**

> If there were one song that would provide the soundtrack to this entire fic, it would not, in fact, be Flight of the Navigator by Childish Gambino but actually Daydreaming by Radiohead. At least that's what I imagine.
> 
> Other songs I used to write this were Twice by Little Dragon, Mind by Calper, New York by St. Vincent, and Something Good by alt-J.
> 
> Comments are greatly appreciated. Find me on [Tumblr](http://3wworms.tumblr.com).


End file.
